PROJECT SUMMARY The Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) is one of the nation's leading academic surgery departments, with a strong and uncompromising commitment to training the next generation of academic surgeon-scientists. The Surgical Oncology Basic Science and Translational Research Training Program is a critical component of this overall training goal. NCI support will provide up to eight surgical trainees (i.e. postdoctoral trainees) from general surgery and other surgical subspecialties the opportunity to develop essential skill sets in basic science, translational, and public health research. The Surgical Oncology Research Training Program has evolved in parallel with a dynamic training environment at WUSM, and currently takes advantage of unique resources in the Department of Surgery, the Siteman Cancer Center, the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences, the Department of Surgery's Division of Public Health Sciences, and the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences to develop customized and highly structured formal didactic and mentored research experiences for individual surgical trainees. The success of the program is demonstrated by the important research accomplishments made by trainees working with program faculty, and the long-term success of trainees in academic medicine. 21/33 trainees (64%) who have completed the research training program and their clinical training in the last fifteen years remain in academic medicine, significantly better than published metrics (16-44%). The Surgical Oncology Research Training Program continues to evolve, and we restructured the program in 2014. Changes made at that time included additions to the program leadership, development of two distinct research tracks (basic science track, and translational research/public health/clinical effectiveness track), and reduction in the number of training slots to allow for an increase in the tuition budget. These changes have been very successful, and will ensure that the Surgical Oncology Research Training Program will continue to maintain excellence at the forefront of two different surgical oncology research paradigms, basic science research, and translational/public health/clinical effectiveness research. NCI support will allow WUSM to continue this highly successful research training program, providing the next generation of surgeon-scientists with the research training required to succeed in an increasingly competitive research environment.